The Political World: Voting, Tolerance, and Civility - The Rise Of Domestic Partner Benefits

Once seen as scandalous, living together is increasingly seen as an acceptable stage in a relationship. Terms such as girlfriend, boyfriend, or lover have come to signify more than one half of a couple. These are often serious, long-term relationships, valued by the heart and, increasingly, by Corporate America. In a sign of how society is changing, the Census created the category of "unmarried partner" just in 1990 and began to track these couples. They discovered that the number of unmarried partner households increased 72% in the 1990s, from 3.18 million to 5.47 million households.

Over 4,200 employers around the country, including colleges and universities, offer domestic partnership benefits, including General Motors, Ford, Boeing, AT&T and IBM. The panel shows the growing number of Fortune 500 companies that offer benefits to domestic partner benefits to unmarried and same-sex couples. The number increased 1,314.2% from 1993-2000, from 7 firms to 99.

How does this fit into a bigger picture? The share of large U.S. companies offering domestic partner benefits has more than doubled from 10% in 1997 to 22% in 2000, according to Hewitt Associates. According to their study, 76% of these companies offered these benefits to attract and retain employees, 30% to comply with a nondiscrimination policy, and 17% to comply with local government regulations. In short, some of these companies offered these benefits because they wanted to, some did it because they had to.

San Francisco was the first city in the nation to insist that all companies holding contracts with the city institute same-sex benefits. It's one thing to have such an ordinance, another to enforce it. In 1997, the city stalled approval of a lease agreement with San Francisco International Airport's largest tenant, United Airlines, for the company's failure to provide domestic partner benefits. (The company did not offer them in the United States, but did so in the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand, where it is required by law.) That same year, the city reported its contracting business strangled under a mountain of red tape. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the situation had become so bad three supervisors who backed the law proposed amending it to allow individual city departments to issue wavers so the city could properly function. In a few cases, the city was forced to award contracts to competitive bidders, none of which offered same-sex benefits.

The next panel will look at the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Source: "Unmarried, with Benefits." U.S. News & World Report. 26 February 2001, p. 10; "Domestic Partner Benefits Doubled From 1997." Research Alert, 26 February 2001, p. 8; "San Francisco DP Enforcement Overwhelmed." Online. Available: http://www.datalounge.com. April 25, 2002. Data for 2001 are as of February 2001.